It's been 10 years since that fateful day I received Settlers of Catan (3rd Ed) as a gift for a company holiday party (at the beginning of December). Since then my collection has grown a great deal and I've become quite the collector.

This week I'll be celebrating by playing one of my top 7 board games of all time, one per night. I'll start with Puerto Rico, which was my first "favorite game."

Modern gaming has had a 2 year hold on me, but only for the last year has it been serious. I started with 7 Wonders and Ticket to Ride. Followed closely by Settlers of Catan. Now my wife laments my obsession and wonders where these new games keep coming from.

Christmas 2016 will be my 35th anniversary of being in the "hobby". My gateway game is D&D. I got my copy of that on xmas 1981. I consider that my "gateway" into the gaming hobby, as before that gaming was the occasional game of chess, LIFE, and Payday...after that I approached table top gaming as a lifestyle playing PRG's mixed in with Axis and Allies, Civilization, Titan, Dune, Ogre, and many years into various other aspects of the hobby.

This year was also my 20th anniversary of playing Settlers of Catan. I played it for the first time in 1996 while working at Wargames West in Albuquerque(Who actually almost bought Mayfair games that same year). I played it just 3 weeks ago....That is some holding power.

The first game I remember actually playing was Car Wars in 1985, not counting the random Parker Bros games at my grandparents house. There was a decade-long break from gaming which Battleball brought me back from and showed me just how much mass gaming had changed.